


reaching for the sky (just to surrender)

by blindbatalex



Category: White Collar
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Get Together, Gunshot Wounds, Multi, Whump, no one dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: Because the image that came to his mind-- it was like a flash of lightning.  He, El and Peter in their living room, the fire crackling in the fireplace and snow falling in slow, fat flakes outside.  El laughing with a wine glass in her hand.  Peter’s eyes, when he turns to Neal, proud.  Of him.  Of them.Neal is alone, bleeding out and about to die on a Tuesday.  All he has is a broken earpiece so that he can talk to Peter, never mind that Peter can't hear him.
Relationships: Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey, Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey
Comments: 19
Kudos: 120





	reaching for the sky (just to surrender)

Neal is dying.

Mozzie would say _everyone_ is dying--each beat of our heart carry us one step closer to our inevitable demise. Mozzie is not wrong; it's just that Neal is dying at a significantly accelerated rate at the moment, courtesy of the gunshot wound in his shoulder. 

He never gave much thought to his own death but he figured he'd go out in style when the time came. In a car chase, maybe, with the Feds chasing after him. Or with one last handsome smile at the love of his life as his vision grew dark.

Instead, here he is, locked in a crumbling room without so much as a door handle on the inside, on the second floor of an abandoned building. Dying on a Tuesday. _And_ , when he woke up this morning and stepped out into the sun, he felt its warmth on his skin for the first time that spring, felt life strumming through his veins. He was almost overwhelmed with gratitude to be alive and to be here, at how lucky he was. Life has a sense of irony after all it seems. The ceiling above him is caked with grime, its once-white paint cracked and crumbling. Maybe it's karma for all his past wrongs. What he deserves.

He pushes himself up, keeping the bunched up suit jacket pressed against his shoulder, fat load of good it's doing, and as he sits, he notices for the first time that the fingers of his other hand are curled tightly into a fist. He uncurls them slowly. On his palm, shielded from much of the blood, he finds his earpiece.

It has split into two, like a broken earbud, held together by a flimsy blue wire running from the middle. 

Peter was talking in his ear, telling him they were almost there, ready to move in as soon as Neal got the last part of Desmond’s confession, when Neal caught something sharp and vicious in Desmond’s eyes. There only for a moment, but before he could utter the distress word, his head exploded in searing pain and the lights went out. When he came to, he was in the back of a windowless van; Desmond was muttering about FBI scum and how he was going to make them pay.

Neal must have picked the earpiece up from the floor, though he has no memory of it. Later, when he got the chance, he tried to run. They shot him for it, nicked the artery by the looks of it, and stuffed him into this room covered in dirt and solid iron railings barring its only window. So that, Desmond said, he would die alone, with no dignity and no help.

Setting the suit jacket aside for a moment, Neal wipes his fingers on his trousers to get off some of the blood. He flicks at the earpiece, presses the two halves together though they break apart a second later, and puts it in his ear.

“Peter, do you copy?”

He pulls himself up to his feet. It takes so much effort you’d think he ran a marathon. His vision swims but it thankfully stabilizes after a long moment.

“It’s rude to ignore your partner, you know that right? Especially a partner as charming and handsome as me,” he tells Peter, who, unbothered by the accusation, keeps to his radio silence.

“I’m close to the airport in case you want to come pick me up.” he coaxes. “I can hear the planes landing and taking off. Building is old-- red brick, three stories.” He cranes his head and gets rewarded with fresh pain and blood from his shoulder. “There is a butcher shop across from me -- ‘Fresh Meats’ -- how original.”

Here is another piece of irony for you, at the end of days: few years back, if you told him he would give everything in the world to hear the voice of Special Agent Burke, or any FBI agent for that matter, Neal would have laughed in your face.

His tombstone will read: Neal Caffrey, con man extraordinaire turned FBI lapdog. Died on a Tuesday.

With a sigh, he drags himself to the window. The sun has already set; the rundown street looks eerie in the deep purples it wears. The glass is old and caked with grime like everything else in this building; it bends and stretches everything that moves past it.

“Did you think I ran?” he asks Peter. Desmond was his alleged ‘business associate’ after all, and the best in the city at making people disappear quickly. ‘Maybe I will cut a deal and disappear myself,’ Neal had said in the car with a wicked grin, right before he went undercover. He doesn’t know why. Peter turned his eyes towards the heavens--well, towards the roof of the Taurus but at the heavens above that presumably--as if asking for God to give him strength. It made Neal smile to himself as he walked away from the car with his back turned to it.

A thick layer of dust coats the window sill. 

“Peter, you think there is a God?”

He cringes when he notices it sticking to his shirt sleeve and then chuckles. Good thing about dying is, ruined formalwear should no longer be one of his worries. 

“Do you think it’s better or worse for me if there is?” he continues. On one hand lies eternal oblivion, which is scary on the other--if there is a heaven, he is highly doubtful he will make the cut. Not with the things he has done.

Peter asked him once, what his heaven would look like.

‘Kate is there. Everyday there is a new art piece I can steal and every coffee bean and wine bottle I desire appears on my table,’ he had said with his widest grin. That wasn’t what he thought of though. Peter shook his head, replied ‘here I thought you were a man reformed,’ and a wave of relief washed over Neal. Because the image that came to his mind-- it was like a flash of lightning. He, El and Peter in their living room, the fire crackling in the fireplace and snow falling in slow, fat flakes outside. El laughing with a wine glass in her hand. Peter’s eyes, when he turns to Neal, proud. Of him. Of them. 

He has of course never told Peter that before today because it’s not the kind of thing you tell. 

Peter had smiled when Neal asked him the same question in turn, spoke of El and Belize and Satchmo, and a world where he didn’t have to worry about Neal.

“That felt like a punch to the gut.” He smiles. On the wall, to his left, are the faded remnants of a sticker--a cartoonish yellow half moon with a night hat on its pointy head. “But it’s okay. I know-- it doesn’t matter.” This must have been a child’s room, once. Did they have loving parents to soothe them when they had nightmares, he wonders, were they happy as they went to bed? His fingers leave thick, red marks where he touches the wall. Blood drips on the floor- tap tap tap.

“I’m scared,” he whispers. “And I am sorry.”

He is sorry for the things he has done. For putting El in harm’s way, for the gray hairs he cost Peter. If he closes his eyes, he can see Peter’s face when Keller had El and Neal admitted to having the treasure. The shame that washed over him when he broke into Peter’s bedroom for the manifest and found a framed picture of their department with Peter’s arm around his shoulders. He is sorry in a way he couldn’t put to words if he tried for letting both of the Burkes down -- he never quite managed to be the person the two of them saw in him.

He staggers, his knees almost giving way, and decides now is as good a time as any to sit down. He slides against the wall; his vision has started to swim. A plane passes over them and shakes the building in its wake.

So, he thinks, this is what dying feels like. He coughs and it seems to take out all of him, muscles spasming, vision going white with pain.

 _I will always find you_ , Peter had said. 

He supposes this makes them 3-and-1.

***

“4-0.”

Neal smiles.

“Yeah?”

Peter took his sweet time to answer. But if this is what it is in the end, you won’t find Neal complaining. If death is an FBI agent, at least it’s the very best.

“No,” Peter says. “You are going to fight. No dying Caffrey, are we clear on that?”

Even with his eyes closed Neal can feel Peter next to him and so he leans to his good side, isn’t disappointed when Peter catches him in his arms. 

“Anything you want Peter.” 

A new wave of pain erupts from his shoulder but it doesn’t matter because Peter’s hands are stroking his hair, his cheeks, holding him together. It feels good.

“Never told you- love you,” Neal sighs before everything fades away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading friends! This is super self-indulgent and I will finish it relatively soon, I promise. Comments are what keep me coming back to write more, so if you liked the story please drop me a line. I'm also @blindbatalex on tumblr if you want to come and say hi.


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